


A draft of an origin story

by stevegallacci



Category: Zootopia
Genre: speculative origin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 00:25:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21498820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevegallacci/pseuds/stevegallacci
Summary: The origin of collective sentience among the mammals of the world had long been the Big Question for science. Paleontology hinted at a fairly abrupt change outside of any normal sense of evolution and genomic analysis only found more questions than answers. Here is more of an outline of a story rather than a full on tale. The plan would have had Sharla the Sheep's point of view for much of it. But, as I was distracted by other things, I've left it as this.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	A draft of an origin story

I'm a very 'hard' science-fiction fan and was groping for a plausible explanation for the every species is intelligent aspect for Zootopia and began noodling an idea. But I've got to get busy at other things, so am leaving it as little more than an outline, less than full filled out story. 

Origin

It started with the upgrade at the Zootopian Naval Observatory's radar unit. The powerful yet sensitive unit was essential for examining space objects in a more active fashion and could detect smaller near space objects better than any optical telescope. When the question came up for what to look at once some basic calibrations were done, the suggestion came up to see if there was anything in the various Lagrange points, stable orbital locations in the Earth Moon system. 

Nothing was known to be there, at least nothing that had gotten in the way of other observations. But no one had deliberately looked in the areas in question either. The search didn't expect anything, but was keen on due diligence, and it wasn't going to take that much time. So there was some happy surprise to find something. It was small, initial estimates were some hundred square meters and about where one would expect to find something. 

As they took a closer look, they found it might be a bit bigger, but its RF albedo seemed unnaturally low. The idea that it might deliberately 'low-observable', an artifact of some kind, caused quite a stir. 

The prospect of an alien artifact made for both great headlines and serious consternation among the various national governments. An international consortium was formed, mainly out of mutual suspicion. The object was in local space and was no great technical challenge to get to, but no one wanted to be left out of any critical discoveries, just in case. 

Getting a basic probe together was no problem; the distance involved didn't need anything particularly fancy, some cameras and sensors, some maneuvering motors and a fairly minimal computer. The distances involved were so close that real time remote control was easily done. 

Depending on what was found, a more sophisticated probe, that could remotely handle and recover samples for return, was being designed in parallel. 

The first probe was launched into orbit then on to intercept without a hitch. The cameras began showing details well before closest approach. It was basically a simple cylinder, perhaps ten meters in diameter, and forty long. The whole thing slowly rotated, once every thirty minutes.

When the probe finally got in close, the resulting visual examination was both dramatic and frustratingly limited. It did appear to be simply a manufactured cylinder, the surface composition difficult to determine, possibly a carbon composite with poor radar reflection, though the off-white finish had a fairly high optical albedo. The surface was nearly featureless, though were a few small details that could be vents or thrusters and possibly some UHF antennas and what might be small optical camera turrets. One end had four apertures, possibly rocket nozzles, but without the obvious expansion bells one would expect. There were several spots that looked like hatches. Two large ones about two by two meters amidships, and three additional hatches, likely docking ports, but rather small, only about forty centimeters in diameter. 

There was writing visible on several areas, possibly warnings or instructions associated with the other features, and some small notations, labels or possibly manufacturer's identification plates. That the text and numbers were there and in apparent context that seemed perfectly normal was encouraging for life and intelligence not so different. The markings simply a 'foreign' alphabet and the numbers quickly sorted out as base (ten) rather then the familiar base (eight). 

The scale of the hardware details, as best could be detected, suggested a smallish hand at work, some screw heads and such were the kind of thing a class A or B size mammal would handle. That fitted well with the scale of the presumed docking hatches. 

Other sensors on the probe indicated that the unit was inert, nothing beyond ambient radiations and no emissions beyond sun-warmed surfaces. 

How long had it been there? It was hard to say, though the surface was fairly uniformly eroded by micro-meteor action

Other than the unfamiliar material surface and unusual presumed motor exhausts, the thing was not so different than any typical piece of space hardware already in orbit. It was large enough to not been some kind of secret launch, it was nearly as big as a Nova first stage, not the kind of thing that could be missed. Finding that the object seemed so oddly mundane, the idea of a second probe was quickly set aside for a crewed mission to take a truly closer look.

The crewed mission would use one of the new large capacity living/reentry modules coupled to a supplemental living space module and a large examination lab space. For bio-safety reasons, the examination lab would remain depressurized and the researchers would be in special isolation suits over their vac-suits. There would also be high-precession remote manipulators to help keep in-suit time to a minimum. The same system would allow for Earth-based specialists to tele-examine specimens.

The whole vehicle would have a fairly efficient propulsion system, to ease into the Lagrange point and then have thrust enough for return and provide breaking thrust for the whole mission to establish orbit rather than a free fall and direct re-entry of just the one module. That way, specimens could be brought back in the lab section and left in orbit for further study. A direct fall back profile was also drawn up, just in case. 

As for the crew, that was a matter of great debate. For a greater collection of expertise and longer mission endurance, the initial suggestion of an all class A and B size mammal crew is formed. Certainly the entry team would have to be so small, if the presumed docking hatches were any indication of the interior volumes. In the large living cabin, there was room to arrange space for up to two dozen crewmembers. That would allow for multiple shifts of a broad range of backgrounds to be focused on what might be found. 

However, in part to get the widest international and interspecies participation, and that, with the tele-commute potential, vast Earth-bound teams could be assembled to do analysis remotely, a smaller number of a wider range of species could crew the mission. That would also simplify crew qualifications. The crew merely needed to be excellent technicians, good lab workers, rather than top researchers, to be the hands and eyes of the experts. 

Then there was the quiet detail that many experts were either unwilling or unable to make the mission. In fact, as the program advanced, there was an undercurrent impression that the whole crew was considered somewhat expendable. Not that it was actually regarded as a suicide mission, but in facing such a total unknown, imaginations went places.

The overall program was a massive undertaking, in part due to the relative haste of it. With the whole Earth up to discover what it was, budget was no object. Any number of processes that would have taken years of plodding effort under stingy cost containment were now free to surge ahead. 

As only some parts were approximately off-the-shelf, there needed to be some flight tests. The craft needed to be launched in parts and assembled in orbit, a complete mission ready first copy was launched and assembled. Along with testing the assembly, this unit also was used for crew training, and if need be, used as a back up for the actual mission. If not, it would serve as additional workspace for the returned mission and its specimens. 

Then there was a hard re-entry test of the living capsule, along with the propulsion package. A simulated mass for the whole mission assembly was boosted off to and back from the opposite equivelent Lagrange point. Then the capsule was boosted back out to fall back to test the direct re-entry performance of the unit. 

And there were some setbacks. The heavy-lift booster that brought up the mission parts was still regarded as a bit marginal in some aspects, so was only provisionally regarded as crew ready. As such all the crews opted to go up in established standard boosters as used by the International Space Station. This also simplified some of the element launches, as the living modules could be over-stocked with supplies rather than accommodate crews. 

Though it was not a crew-related component, one of the heavy launches did fail, loosing a propulsion unit. Though assembling a replacement was not too difficult, re-certifying the booster system, including two new test launches put the over-all program back the better part of a year. 

That delay altered the crew mix, as various potential members came and went as time dragged on. Also, as details of the mission and the requirements of the crew were reconsidered and fine-tuned, there were new rounds of training. The analytical crew was now expected to have some expertise in ship's crew functions. That several were already engineers and/or had previous space crew experience helped. The end goal was to have everyone on board able to operate the ship at least a basic level. 

Finally, as all the hardware became readied, so to were final crew selections made. 

(I was thinking of writing the story from Sharla's POV, as she would later become interested in engineering, join the ZAF as a foreign technologies annalist and then gets tagged for astronaut training as a mission specialist. Why a sheep? She was young, smart, eager to go, not too big, and semi-expendable - but we won't mention that last bit) 

The mission launch and all was without mishap, and if anything was rather underwhelming, aside from the fact of mission. 

Arrival was without any particular drama, other than the fact of there was an honest to goodness alien ship out there. The first days were spent re-examining the exterior, revealing little new. Then, finally the decision was made to enter the ship. 

It would be a ferret who would attempt to open one of the hatches. There appeared to be both a motor drive socket and a manual rotating hatch lock, and with a bit of effort, the manual lock worked, and the hatch swung inward. There was an airlock inside, a simple cylindrical volume with a second larger hatch at the far end. Before attempting to go further, there was a careful examination of the airlock, with emphasis on some instructional placards that experts back home were attempting to translate. 

The inner door was clearly designed to open inward, precluding any pressure differential, so there was no chance of a depressurization. The inner chamber appeared to be a space suit service room. Made sense. The room was only about a meter high, plenty of room for the exploring Ferret and his back up Rat. They found approximately rat size space suits in a couple wall lockers. That answered that. And the room's layout assumed a 'down' towards the thrusters, suggesting the ship might run under thrust for extended periods, or at least used that direction as the default.

Just as important, they found a note attached to the far wall form the airlock hatch. It was an internal schematic of the ship, a major first step in its own right, but it had arrows drawn on it to indicate that they should proceed to what might be the command center or cockpit of the ship. While it was quickly agreed that they should follow the map, they still made a thorough examination of the room. Along with space suits and related hardware, they also found what might be small robots, perhaps little helper 'bots. Little more than boxes with small legs or arms on each corner and a 'neck' with a multi-camera little 'head' on one end. 

With a little trial and error, they discovered that the ship's hull was strongly shielded for EM/RF and so they used a fibre-optic ribbon to keep in touch with their ship and the anxious world, which was watching all this live.

As they proceeded through the ship, they found the layout did seem to favor the one 'down' direction, to the point that there was carpeting on some of the floor areas and all the text signs and placards were aligned so. 

The ship's bridge was a semicircular room lined with workstations and articulated crew couches, all scaled for more or less rat-sized bodies. There was one central couch, and it was occupied. 

It had been a rat, not so different than any in Zootopia, perhaps an unfamiliar race or species, but nothing at all alien. It looked like it was old, rather white around the muzzle, in a simple jumpsuit-like one-piece overall. Clipped to its body was a note, a couple pages worth, some words and some sketchy cartoons. Instructions to look to books. One of the wall areas had several shelves of books; most were ship's systems manuals. But one, with a note attached was the one to read first. 

It was an illustrated dictionary, though started off with science basics, references to time space and volume, using a system just like their own metric system, using water and the speed of light as fundamental basics. It went on to explain phonetics and the symbol logy of an alphabet. To everyone's delight, it didn't look any more foreign than any of the more dissimilar languages back on Earth. 

So the world came to find out about how it all began. 

The rats came from another Earth, an alternate universe, where only one species, unrelated to anything there, had evolved intelligence and developed a technic civilization. But though it was clever, it was not wise, and brought about its own demise. But before doing so, had genetically modified a small group of rats to sentience, and they bred true, inheriting a world now devoid of their creators. 

The rats created their own civilization, which eventually lead to space and even the stars. It was that interstellar technology, involving a distortion of the fabric of space, that accidentally discovered an alternate universe, this Earth. With the prospect of a virgin world with the broad range of extant species, the rats decided on a vast experiment, to modify all the mammals into intelligence. 

Exactly how they did that was not included in the material left on the ship. 

But this revelation did a lot to explain some of the mysterious and confusing details in the new science of genetics. How some features at the genomic level were reasonably consistent with evolutionary theory, yet some seemed perversely anomalous, advanced and presumably recent features that were too similar across all lines to have been parallel evolution. Further, there were paleontological evidence that these features were entirely absent until very recently as well. 

Speculation was rampant, but evidence entirely lacking. The scientific community had heretofore half-heartedly suggested some exotic mutagenic circumstance, but had to admit they simply didn't have a good explanation. 

The ship's notes answered that question. 

Also aboard were extensive manuals and technical information on the ship, its interstellar drive, and the underlying technologies for it all. But as much of the technical base for it was still several generations of advancement beyond what was current, it would be a while before they would have their own starships. 

There was a final tragic note to all that the ship contained. 

The sole dead inhabitant's note made it clear that he was not suppose to have come and leave all that the ship contained to some future. But he had done so to give them some answers and an opportunity to jump-start their way to the stars. However, he included a warning not to seek the alternate universe from which he had come. He did not explain why, except that things had gone badly and they ought not risk the fate of his species. 

All this was going to be a fully fleshed out story, but time and interest waned and so I'm posting it in this raw form just for show and tell. And, yes, it is a Rat of NIMH tie-in.


End file.
